Chilled Tuscan Bread Soup, Panzanella Salad, Smoked Burrata di Bufala

by Mark Broadbent

May 22nd 2020

This is a raw soup – an Italian version of gazpacho if you will – thickened with bread. The only time you need to allow for is the mingling of soup ingredients, then blitz. Bank holiday lunch sorted.

Our incredible supplier L’emporio (the best Italian Fine Food Supplier in the business) is really the star of the show here. Combined with badass San Marzano tomatoes from Nature’s Choice, it’s the quality and excellence of their ingredients that brings these authentic regional Italian flavours to life.

TIP: Go online to L’emporio here and get these ingredients delivered to your home in no time. The better the quality of passata, olive oil, red wine vinegar, capers, anchovies and olives – the better the overall dish flavour will be. There is no cooking process here to enhance these flavours, they are what they are. It’s worth investing in – they are Summer staples.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Melt the butter and grate in the garlic clove. Tear the bread shards into thin wisps and place on a baking tray. Brush with the garlic butter and bake until golden brown.

Peel and chop the onion and chop the celery for the soup.

Wash the San Marzano tomatoes.

For 2 of the tomatoes: De-skin, de-seed and dice (concasse) the tomatoes: score an X on the bottom of tomatoes and blanch in boiling water for 10 seconds, then plunge into cold water for a few seconds. Peel back the tomatoes skins from the X, chop into quarters and deseed. (Reserve this seeded part and push through a sieve for a strained tomato juice to serve at the end.) Evenly dice the remaining tomato flesh.

Trim the basil stalks for the soup and reserve the leaves for the salad, tearing the leaves ready to use.

Crush the garlic clove and combine with the sugar, salt and caper vinegar.

Finely slice half a celery stick into neat half moons.

Roughly chop the anchovy for the soup and finely slice lengthways the fillets for the salad.

Roughly chop the capers.

Break and stone the olives.

Tear the smoked burrata into small chunks.

METHOD

Tuscan Bread Soup:

Place the chopped celery, onion, anchovy fillets and basil stalks in a bowl.

With your hands, squeeze the big tomatoes into the bowl so they break up into chunks.